


Brotherly Advice

by I_am_lampy



Series: Open Your Eyes [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Love, M/M, Mycroft Being a Good Brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 15:38:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10879809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_am_lampy/pseuds/I_am_lampy
Summary: "Apologize," Mycroft said."I can't," Sherlock said quietly watching his trembling hands. The last time he sat in this chair with trembling hands it was because he'd been about to kiss John for the first time."For God's sake, Sherlock, it's John Watson! He is the only person on this planet who can stand to spend more than an hour in your company and likely the only chance at love that you will ever get in your pathetic life. What could possibly matter more than that?"





	Brotherly Advice

* * *

Someone was talking to Sherlock but he'd stopped listening. He wasn't entirely sure he was ever listening in the first place. In fact, it was highly likely that nobody was actually talking to him and that he was just imagining it. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. _Nothing_ mattered without John.

When he thought about the look on John's face when Sherlock had told him they were no longer friends, he could only look at it obliquely, taking in one part of the picture at a time. John's lower right chin, just beginning to dimple with sorrow. His right eyeball held unnaturally still in shock. His forehead beginning to lower in defeat.

_Are we at least still friends?_

_At least_. Sherlock scoffed. As though anything about John Watson could be categorized as the _least_ of something.

John's face when Sherlock had said no – effectively ending his relationship with his best friend and the love of his life – was something he couldn't delete, no matter how much he wanted to. He'd abandoned John to that hateful word spat out of Sherlock's mouth as though his and John's relationship could be reduced to two single letters. The two letters of the English language that even an eighteen month old child could make (which made him think of Rosie, a pain he couldn't even look at obliquely).

N and O – they were stuck on a loop in Sherlock's head. How long ago was it that he'd walked out on John? A week? No, it was more than a week because his new bed had been delivered and installed for at least a week and he hadn't bought it until he'd had to change his clothes and realized couldn't go near the old one and that was three days after he'd left John.

He was in the wrong. He knew he was in the wrong but the other thing stuck on a loop in his head was John having sex with this _Gerald person_ in a bed that Sherlock imagined like something out of the Moulin Rouge – decadent and done up in red and gold – and John having sex with this _Riley person_ in Sherlock's very own bed, something Sherlock could picture in far more detail.

John, _his_ John, the John who should never have belonged to anyone _but_ Sherlock had not only slept with someone who looked like Sherlock but he'd also slept with someone who, according to John, looked a little like Moriarty. And _then_ he'd cheated on the Moriarty lookalike with the _Sherlock_ lookalike (and couldn't we spend _ages_ analyzing that through a Freudian lens) and those images –

Someone pinched Sherlock's wrist.

Sherlock lowered his eyes to the violated wrist, found the offending fingers and followed them up the arm to – oh.

"What do you want, Mycroft?" Sherlock said. His voice sounded funny. Congested. "Do I have a cold?"

"No, you idiot. You've been crying."

"Ridiculous. I don't cry," Sherlock said and looked down at his hands. There were trembling.

"Sherlock, have you spoken to him at all?"

"Who?"

"John Watson," Mycroft said with a sigh.

"No, I haven't and you know what else, Mycroft?" Sherlock felt his indignation gathering anew and it propelled him to his feet. "Neither John nor I can go three steps without half of MI6 and all the CCTV cameras within a mile focused on our every move and yet you manage to miss the _one time_ you should have been paying attention, that one time being when John decided to _defile_ my bed with this – this _person_."

Sherlock slumped back in his chair again.

"Yes, I saw that you had bought a new bed. Say, I have an idea. Why don't you and John _defile_ the new one together?"

"What?" Sherlock asked, looking at him in horror.

"I'm suggesting that you apologize, Sherlock. I know," Mycroft said, holding up a hand to stave off any objections Sherlock might have. "Apologizing is distasteful at best, but in this case an apology is far overdue for our dear Dr. Watson. Also, if I can't rely upon John being a part of your life, I fear I'll have to hire you a nanny."

Sherlock stopped just short of sticking his tongue out at Mycroft. Then suddenly, all the fight went out of him. He put his head in his hands. He didn't want to cry in front of Mycroft. He didn't want to cry in front of anyone. The only person he'd ever cried in front of as an adult was – well. John.

"Sherlock," Mycroft said with _tenderness_ in his voice, which made it harder for Sherlock to bite back the tears. "It's taken the two of you so many years to get here. Are you really going to throw it all away because he slept with someone else?"

" _In my bed!_ " Sherlock objected, humiliated to see the tears that dropped onto his blue silk dressing gown. He cinched it tighter, having only just then realized he wasn't wearing anything under it but his pants.

"Yes, in your bed, which is – might I point out – a _thing_. He did not _defile_ you personally nor did he _defile_ your relationship with him, no matter how much you would wish otherwise. You are jealous and possessive, plain and simple, Sherlock. From the moment you met John Watson, you guarded him jealously."

"You never answered my question, Mycroft," Sherlock said, changing the subject. He lifted up the hem of his dressing gown to wipe his nose, causing Mycroft to huff in disgust. "Why didn't you tell me John was sleeping with someone else?"

"Because you would have come rushing home from God knows where, to save him from his own stupidity, very neatly drawing Moriarty's people to him in the process, thus negating the need for the whole secret fake death in the first place and probably getting you both killed."

Sherlock glowered at Mycroft as much as one can glower and still have hot, humiliating tears dropping onto one's blue silk dressing gown.

"Apologize," Mycroft said.

"I can't," Sherlock said quietly watching his trembling hands. The last time he sat in this chair with trembling hands it was because he'd been about to kiss John for the first time.

"For God's sake, Sherlock, it's John Watson! He is the only person on this planet who can stand to spend more than an hour in your company and likely the only chance at love that you will ever get in your pathetic life. What could possibly matter more than that?"

"Well," Sherlock said, biting back a sob. "When you put it that way."

"He's home today. Text him and ask him if you can see him."

Sherlock looked at his hands and nodded.

" _Now,_ Sherlock!" Mycroft said. He stood up and grabbed Sherlock's phone off the desk and then dropped it in Sherlock's lap.

Sherlock opened up the messaging app and started to send a text and then stopped. He stopped and took a deep breath and then he pushed speed dial for John. It went straight to voicemail and Sherlock hung up.

"Should I leave a message?" Sherlock asked, feeling his lips drawing together from the edges like they always did when he cried, pushing his bottom lip out and making him look like he was six years old.

"Sherlock," Mycroft sighed. "At this point you should not be above begging. Call him, text him, stalk him – whatever it takes to get him to deign to listen to you, even if it's only to stop you calling, texting and stalking him – and then beg for his forgiveness for your rash and childish behavior."

Sherlock looked at Mycroft in horror but Mycroft only raised his eyebrows in challenge. Sherlock pulled his legs up and set his heels against the edge of the chair, folding himself up. It made his knees stiff and they creaked when he finally got up, but he'd done it since he was a child whenever he felt overwhelmed.

The truth was Sherlock had been ready to apologize precisely seventeen hours and fifteen minutes after he had left John in his living room with the echo of that hateful word – _no_ – but he had convinced himself that John could never forgive him and Sherlock couldn't bear the idea of being rejected.

"I never should have faked my death," Sherlock said miserably.

"Perhaps not. Or perhaps you should have trusted him enough to bring him in on the secret."

"He needed to appear to be _grieving_ , Mycroft!"

"It was your decision, Sherlock, and one I advised against, but what's done is done. You have to look at it from John's point of view. Surely, after all these years, you cannot still be convinced that you did him a favor by letting him think you were dead."

"It's not like I was having a _good time_ , Mycroft," Sherlock spat. "Has he ever considered _that?_ Not once. Not one fucking time."

"Ah," Mycroft said quietly in the voice that meant he knew something about Sherlock that either Sherlock himself didn't know or didn't want Mycroft to know. "Now we come to the truth."

"What does that mean – _Ah?"_ Sherlock asked irritably.

"It means, dear brother, that you are using your jealousy as an excuse to avoid sharing _your_ secrets because you believe the things you did when you were pretending to be dead are far worse than having sex with someone else."

Sherlock clenched his jaw. "With someone else in _my_ bed," he muttered.

"For God's sake, Sherlock, _let – it – go_. John has done nothing to be ashamed of save what he had to do in order to deal with his grief. It would also help the two of you to resolve your issues if you kept your hands to yourself."

"Please tell me you don't have cameras in John Watson's bedroom," Sherlock said, his voice low and menacing.

"I don't need cameras in his bedroom to know you probably allowed your licentiousness to overrule your judgment. You forget how well I know you, brother mine. You _gorge_ yourself on physical pleasure when you actually allow yourself the opportunity. And while I would much rather you gorge yourself on John Watson than illicit substances, the fact remains that you cannot just force yourself on him. The two – "

"I did not _force_ myself on John!" Sherlock spat, surging to his feet.

" _Sit – down_ ," Mycroft ordered. "My God, you look like a puffed up tomcat. I'm not suggesting you forced yourself on him _against his will_. But John is exceedingly vulnerable to your powers of persuasion – which are considerable."

Sherlock sat back down but hovered on the edge of his chair, in preparation for the next time Mycroft insulted him and he needed to launch to his feet in indignation.

"I just didn't see the _point_ of digging everything up," Sherlock said, wrapping his arms around himself.

"The _point_ , dear brother, is that those two years changed you both completely and irrevocably. Neither one of you is the same man he was before you faked your death. And now, on top of all of _those_ unresolved issues, you have everything that has happened in the three years since you were _resurrected_ from the dead. Including the most important unresolved issue – Eurus."

"Well, that's _your_ fault," Sherlock said, glaring at Mycroft. "Talk about sentiment overruling judgment."

"We're not talking about me right now, Sherlock, so stop trying to change the subject. We are discussing _you_ and _John_. Now phone him back, leave a message and then go take a shower and put on some clothes. You look like a vagrant."

"Are you leaving now? Because I'm confident that if you stay any longer I will stab you in the eye with your umbrella."

"I should like to see you try," Mycroft said but he stood up nonetheless. He straightened his waistcoat and then sighed. "You are a fool if you let your pride stop you from fixing this."

"Yes, thank you, goodbye. See yourself out, please," Sherlock said, sneering. "Oh, by the way _brother mine_. What does one wear when one goes begging for forgiveness?"

"I wouldn't know," Mycroft said smugly. "I've avoided sentiment thus far in my life."

"And clearly you are so much better off for it," Sherlock snapped.

"I never said I was better off, Sherlock," Mycroft said with that same note of _tenderness_ that he had picked up since the whole business with Eurus. "I've chosen to devote my life to other pursuits and one of those happens to be your welfare. So for the love of God, _save John Watson_."

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I always welcome emails from readers about anything that tickles your fancy, even if it's just randomness!
> 
> archiveofMYown@gmail.com  
> Teddy


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